Nanshan Spring-Water Chicken 南山泉水鸡
Nanshan Spring-Water Chicken is featured among the local specialties of Chongqing.
Nanshan Spring-Water Chicken (南山泉水鸡) is free-range chicken cooked with mountain spring water, the dish that restaurants on Nanshan (南山) in Nan'an District (南岸区), Chongqing, are known for. A 2003 Chongqing Morning Post (重庆晨报) report calls it one of Chongqing's specialty dishes and describes it as numbing-hot, fresh and tender.
How it is made
The Chongqing Municipal Commission of Culture and Tourism Development describes the version served by Laoyao (老幺), one of the best-known Nanshan restaurants: free-range chicken (土鸡) is paired with mountain spring water, chopped into pieces and fried, seasoned with a house sauce and then simmered slowly over a low flame.
Flavour and texture
The same commission sums up the flavour as numbing, hot, fresh, fragrant and tender, with the numbing sensation arriving first and the chilli heat following.
Where it comes from
The dish is tied to a 'spring-water chicken street' (泉水鸡一条街) in Huangjueya (黄桷垭) on Nanshan. In 2013 China Economic Net (中国经济网) described it as a street about 3,000 metres long, with Laoyao, Zhulou (竹楼) and Tabao (塔宝) among its older restaurants; Laoyao's owner Long Hao (龙浩) said his was among the first on Nanshan to serve the dish. The Zhulou spring-water chicken restaurant opened in 1994, and in 2003 its food company began selling a packaged, heat-and-eat version in supermarkets at Jiefangbei (解放碑).
Of the ten tourist routes Nan'an District put forward in 2023, as reported by People's Daily Online, several on Nanshan stop for a lunch of Nanshan Spring-Water Chicken and other local dishes, among them routes that take in the Huangge ancient road (黄葛古道) or Huangjueya old street (黄桷垭老街).
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-26. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.